Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

We are passing into a social phase in which unless a heroic effort is made for human dignity and freedom, gold will be the sole method of government and therefore the sole standard of manners.

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The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.

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Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off.

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Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

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Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.

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...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

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The English are no nearer than they were a hundred years ago to knowing what Jefferson really meant when he said that God had created all men equal.

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Free verse'? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch 'free architecture'.

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My brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, was born when I was about five years old; and, after a brief pause, began to argue. He continued to argue to the end. I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarreled. Perhaps the principal objection to a quarrel is that it interrupts an argument.

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The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense.

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From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy.

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A good man's work is effected by doing what he does, a woman's by being what she is.

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Ivory may not be so white as snow, but the whole Arctic continent does not make ivory black.

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And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, "I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."

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Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.

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Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself.

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You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.

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But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

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You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it is horrible because I could commit it.

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Modern man is educated to understand foreign languages and misunderstand foreigners.

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